"Satisfaction is the breeding ground of complacency.​Every piece is a fight, sometimes I win, sometimes they do."

RYAN MYERS

Sweet Nightmares: Disremembering is your upcoming show in Los Angeles. What kind of new work are you showing?​

Ryan: Paintings, drawings and mixed media pieces pushing further into the color and figural aesthetic I've been trying to cultivate over the past few years. Image and shape echoing and painterly geometrics. I retired some of the adolescents that had made up the bulk of my older work in order to allow myself room to grow.

SN: There is a melancholic dreamlike quality of childhood wonder through the form and content of your works.What keeps bringing you back to that nostalgia?​

R: I think nostalgia is one of the fundamental building blocks that we rely on for the basis of who we are for the greater part of our later lives. And to tap into that opens many narrative avenues for myself and the viewers in my work. It gives the opportunity for the viewer bring something of themselves to my work.​SN: Do you find yourself reflecting on the past more as you grow older?

R: I wish, in reality I have a terrible memory and rely on friends and family to remind me of where and who I was formerly. In my work I hardly ever look back in the constant pursuit of growth and what's next.

SN: What do you hope viewers feel with your messages and themes?

R: That's a tough one for me. All that I hope is that they can find something in the work that they can identify with in terms of emotion or feeling. If I've done what I set out to do then the viewer has been able to tell themselves a unique and personal story that started with my piece and ended somewhere within them.

SN: What is the typical process of a Ryan Myers piece? How do you approach a blank page?

R: I wouldn't say there's one path to my process. Sometimes it starts with a title that serves as the genesis for an idea. Other times it's an image, or a color. Typically speaking I don't do much preliminary work when approaching a new piece. I start with blank canvas or paper and use some sort of dry media to lay in the basics of form and idea. That's done for speed purposes.

SN: I like that titles can motivate your pieces, the same an idea or theme can.

R: Absolutely! I tend to work out all the elements as I go along so it's a maelstrom of change. To eliminate waiting or down time at the beginning is the key to Not losing sight of what I want at the end. More often than not I think of a phrase or a turn of words that sounds interesting and stands alone strongly enough to drive an imaginary narrative.

SN: What is your inspiration behind the geometric shapes?

R: Their use came out of the flattening of visual space that I desired. I don't seek to make paintings that could ever be mistaken for photos. With that in mind, for me, I like to leave evidence of my process. The geometric stuff grew out of the under structuring that I had always used and previously hidden to build my compositions.

SN: The works feel more like dreams and memories, lost moments of purity. The geometrics almost come across as the brain's mechanism peering through, as if glitching in and out of a projected memory.

R: I like that. For me, it's all function of form, shapes on a page. My work has always been very still, like a frame from a reel. That's how and why I started with image doubling as it's different perspectives of the same image, like an implied motion, two consecutive slides.

SN: Even the facial expressions are often still, maybe a bit sad.

R: It's not sadness, it's a complete disconnect. Emotionlessness. It allows the viewer to graft their own emotions onto the figure.

SN: How did you develop your style?

R: I fell backwards into pop surrealism in the mid 2000's because I was painting seemingly pissed off kids. At that point I was already scratching at some of the elements that I would later utilize more frequently, like expressive flat color and squared off shape. I used the kids as a means to explore what can be done with very little expression and motion. When I began to realize that the niche I had been cultivating with the kids was in reality more a pigeonhole I decided to branch out. Growth for me is necessity.

As a result, I am always pushing and trying new things, many of which never see the light of day. Having been buried under layers and layers of paint.

SN: Growth is essential especially as an artist, you don't want to get stuck in the same corner.

R: Exactly. So I took on older models carrying through some of the same emotive themes that I had been using previously.

SN: Are you satisfied with your latest experiments? Is anything sticking for you?

R: I can say I've got some satisfaction with what I am doing now, but that can change every second with every brushstroke. So much of what I do is structured on balance, be it color or shape. Every piece is a fight, sometimes I win, sometimes they do. Satisfaction is the breeding ground of complacency.

SN: Do you feel more satisfied or disappointed when finishing a piece? Are you often surprised by the results?

R: I wouldn't say I'm ever surprised, because I have been privy to all the successes and mistakes involved in getting the piece to the point where I can ship it out as "finished". The satisfaction is temporary as there are infinite ways to fill up a page or canvas and just because one feels like it might work it's no guarantee that the next one will.